The primary business benefit of Cloud computing is that it can enable organizations to achieve a ‘Level 5′ BPM maturity.

BPM stands for Business Process Management, and how effectively an organization has mastered this science can be quantified on a maturity scale, ranging from 1-5.

The details involved at each level and how to progress through them is detailed by the uber-guru of BPM himself, Michael Hammer.

Diagram can be found in Wikipedia here.

Michael invented the concept of Business Process Re-engineering in the 80′s, setting the scene for an entire industry of related consulting and enterprise software to implement it.

Most recently Michael has invented the ‘PEMM’ – The Process and Enterprise Maturity Model (PEMM), a framework for assessing and improving BPM capabilities. How these process sophistications enable High Performance is described in his Harvard article.

PEMM describes a matrix that make this science repeatable, including sections such as process design, change management, decision-making authorities, management metrics, leadership, culture and organizational process expertise. Each can be moved along the scale of 1-5 maturity so that overall the organization improves.

For Cloud computing it is the ‘Infrastructure’ element we’re particularly interested in. It begins with “fragmented legacy IT systems” and concludes with a level 5 ranking of:

“An IT system with a modular architecture that adheres to industry standards for interenterprise communication support the process.”

The move to Cloud computing represents this same maturation process.

Virtualizing applications and integrating them into a broader Cloud ecosystem moves them from an isolated, legacy platform to an agile environment where software is far more flexible, it can be deployed and re-deployed quickly and effectively, and is inter-connected through open Cloud standards.

Managing this migration process is the core purpose of Transform Consulting services.

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